American-Style Cassata Cake: The Best Cake You've Never Heard Of
Good morning, friends! Today is a special day because Andrew turns thirty-one and we are off to a very swank restaurant tonight. Because we cook so many lovely dinners together all the year round, we have a birthday tradition of treating each other to a great dinner out. This event is without limitations. We order drinks, appetizers, mains, and a dessert if there’s any room left inside us, which there almost always is if the menu says “bread pudding” and Andrew has any voice left. This year he asked me to surprise him with the restaurant selection, and also choose someplace we had never been before.
This is a very tall order for a Monday night; almost any restaurant worth its salt is closed Mondays in a general display of “we served you well all weekend and we need a break.” Each restaurant I looked up off my “we should really eat there soon” list subscribes to this Monday break. Nevertheless, after some crowdsourcing I found one option, made reservations, and will let you know all about it later on. At any rate, I think it’ll do very nicely for a birthday dinner. I think it is swank. Or rather, I was told it was swank by the person who recommended it to me, and I hope their definition and mine line up. As someone with admittedly bougie taste, I am disappointed by praises sung for restaurant that you find out, later, is actually a chain (and not an exclusive one at that). Still, I have hopes for this place. The tipping point came with its reputation of “excellent tableside Caesar salads”. It's on my bucket list to experience an excellent Caesar salad, tableside. It falls right in line with my dream of one day ordering lobster thermidor from my king size bed for zero reason except it’s midnight and I’ve just come back to my room at the Ritz from a show or a jazz club and I’m feeling lavish. (I’ve never craved midnight seafood, nor stayed at the Ritz before, but please bear with my fantasy.)
We’ve been celebrating Andrew’s birthday here and there across the weekend, starting with a both-sides family party Saturday night, with cake. Andrew is a very reliable guy, and this is also evident when it comes to his choice of birthday cake. On his first birthday when we were dating, I said I’d make a cake and was told that what he’d really like was a cassata cake
“A what?”
“You know, a cassata cake.”
“I most certainly do not know.”
“It’s like....a white cake, with ricotta cheese filling? And whipped cream for frosting and --”
I’m going to be forthright and tell you that the mental picture painted by these words did not sound remotely appealing. A cake filled with….ricotta cheese? I could not picture it, and I’d certainly never heard of it. But I also know that Buffalo, NY and Chesapeake, VA are two distinct cultures into which to be born and develop birthday traditions. It was probably delicious.
And you know what? It is.
I have made (or eaten) cassata cake for each of Andrew’s birthdays ever since, and often his sister’s, and sometimes his parents’. Those its exact provenance is unclear (it is not the traditional, bowl-shaped Sicilian cake stuffed with dried fruit and marzipan), this American-style cassata cake is apparently beloved by several generations of Italian-Americans. It’s easy to see why; the “ricotta filling” is essentially the stuff with which cannolis are filled. This filling, composed of strained ricotta, whipping cream, confectioner’s sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon, vanilla, and bits of chocolate, is spread between split layers of white cake, resulting in a quadruple level cake which is then enrobed in fluffy, stabilized whipped cream. The end result is light on the palate, and almost refreshing, not overtly sweet. It’s the perfect foil to a heavy dinner, or when you feel like a bit of dessert but not too much. To decorate, I like to scatter mini chocolate chips on the top, pipe the whipped cream into vintage swoops, and dot them with halved candied or maraschino cherries, and flakes of edible gold. This is a cake that looks exactly like you’d expect a cake to look on a postwar table in NYC after sugar rations were done. It looks like a Norman Rockwell party, a vintage bakery, the birthday cake emoji.
There seemed to be no better way to celebrate Andrew’s birthday than by sharing his favorite cake with you. I hope that you enjoy baking it for your own family or friends, for it really is an all-occasion cake. The pinch-hitter for any occasion when suggestions for other cakes have failed you. (Babe? Are you reading this? I googled “pinch hitter” to make sure I used that sports reference correctly, and I did. Another birthday gift just for you!)
I think I might shock you with what I want to say next: while I usually make every bit of my cakes from scratch, I find that, in the context of a cassata cake, a white or yellow cake mix is perfectly acceptable, and is what I typically use. A cassata cake is a dozen times more about the filling and frosting than it is about the cake, and this is why I recommend cutting this one corner.
Think about it: cake mixes are undeniably fast and affordable. They are accessible too, and eliminate multiple steps of what would otherwise be an extended recipe (cake, filling, and frosting). My typical recipe for from-scratch white cake uses a great many ingredients (tons of egg whites, buttermilk, butter, cake flour, etc.) and is meant to make much more cake than I need for a typical cassata cake for our family parties. So for the purposes of cassata cake and cassata cake only, I recommend using a cake mix. If you want to make your cake layers from scratch, you certainly can. But the real payload of this cake is in that ricotta filling, and the whipped cream frosting.
Another baker’s note: cassata cake is all about the timing - you want to strain the ricotta cheese a full eight hours before making the filling; you want to bake the cake layers and cool them; you want to assemble the cake and then chill it an hour before frosting. If you’re looking for where to focus your effort, a box mix will be just fine. Because of this, my recipe is going to begin with listing “two baked, cooled, cake layers” as ingredients. Do with that what you may!
I hope that you’ll make this cake for your family or a friend. It is an all-weather, all-season, all-occasion cake that tastes very, very nice. If you’ve been looking for something new to try, I think you might like this. Thanks for letting me share our birthday traditions with you!
Love, Rachel
American-Style Cassata Cake:
2 baked, cooled yellow or white cake layers
For filling:
1/2 cup whipping cream
15 ounces whole milk ricotta
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 ounces mini chocolate chips, or finely chopped dark chocolate
Zest of one lemon, finely zested
For whipped cream frosting:
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
A splash of vanilla
For decorating:
Mini chocolate chips
Candied or maraschino cherries
Piping bag and tip
The evening before you want to make the cake, strain your ricotta. I do this by placing cheesecloth in a mesh strainer, and the ricotta into the cheesecloth. Set over a bowl into which the strainer will fit, and let it hang out in the fridge at least eight hours, or overnight.
The next day, bake a two-layer cake according to package or recipe directions. Allow the layers to fully cool.
In a large mixing bowl, whip the cream to stiff peaks. Scrape into a bowl and set aside. In the mixing bowl, beat together strained ricotta, powdered sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and lemon zest till smooth. Fold in the whipped cream, then fold in the chocolate chips. Set this filling in the fridge until ready to assemble the cake.
If you plan to use maraschino cherries, set these aside on a paper towel to drain and dry so that their red juice does not run all over your cake. This step is unnecessary with candied cherries
Working carefully, split each cake layer in half, laterally, so that you end with a total of four cake layers rather than two.
On a cake stand, arrange the bottom layer. Spread with one-third of the ricotta filling, or as much as seems reasonable (it is okay if you do not use up all the filling in this project, it’s quite tasty as a fruit or cookie dip). Set a second cake layer on top, and repeat, then a third layer. Cap with the fourth layer, and do not put any filling on top of this. Set the cake in the fridge to chill for an hour or so. This will firm up the filling and give you a sturdier base to frost.
When the cake is chilled, prep your frosting: beat heavy whipping cream till it becomes frothy, then add the powdered sugar. Beat to stiff peaks, careful not to overmix (overmixing whipping cream results in butter), and when stiff peaks have been reached, gently mix in vanilla extract to taste.
Frost the sides and top of your cake in ruffle-y swoops, or smoothly and pipe swirls or stars around the edges. Scatter mini chocolate chips over the top, and decorate with halved cherries as desired.
Return cake to the fridge to chill until ready to eat. This cake will keep, frosted, for 24 hours at least, though the whipped cream frosting may begin to wilt toward the end. It will still taste delicious as leftovers after the party, but may lose definition from piping work, as whipped cream is not as sturdy as buttercream frosting, though arguably tastier.
Bonus Points: our favorite ice cream shop creates an amaretto ice cream that Andrew is obsessed with - we picked up a pint for the party and found that it is the ideal ice cream pairing for this cake - a match made in Italian bakery heaven. Niche, but important information. For those local to the 757, you can get it at Gelati Celesti! Highly recommend this pairing.
